Try Thai: The Best in China Town

Try Thai is one of the popular restaurants in China Town, Manchester. Known for its authentic Thai food, the restaurant spans across two floors, the lower one with a Thai Canopy style bar and the upper one for fine dining.

From the expansive menu, we ordered the following –Thai King Prawn Cakes: These were king prawns and pork flavoured with lime leaves and lightly fried, served with sweet chilli vegetable peanut dip.Chicken in Pandan Leaves: The chicken pieces wrapped in Pandan leaves marinated with garlic, curry powder and soy sauce and again lightly deep fried. The Pandan leaves with their sweet aroma and soft taste, is ideal for wrapping savoury items like chicken or even sticky rice.Thai Crispy Calamari: These are calamari rings dipped batter and deep fried. I love calamari and this dish I found, was too oily for my liking.Crispy Battered Soft Shell Crab: Deepfried battered soft shell crab served with Thai sweet chilli sauce: Again, a tad oily.Crispy Coriander Beef: These were tender pieces of beef enhanced with fresh coriander seeds and fried. This was the best among starters and fortunately the frying had not over powered the taste of the beef.

All the starters we ordered, were deep fried and I was wondering whether they would have anything which is deep fried in the menu! Also the garnish with all the dishes were same – orchid flowers and parsley and shreds of cabbage and carrots – and could have been more exciting than these.

For the main course we ordered a King Prawn Garlic and Pepper and Chicken Red Curry and couple of portions of Jasmine Rice to go along with it.

The classic red curry with aubergines flavoured with red chillies, lime leaves, sweet basil and shallots was creamy with coconut milk and succulent pieces of chicken in it. A true classic. But the King Prawn Garlic and Pepper was in a sauce similar to an other. I thought the taste of prawns were subdued with sweetness of the sauce instead of the flavours of both garlic and pepper.

But the Pineapple Fried Rice, which we ordered was pretty good and I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and flavour of this dish. This dish had a combination of bite sized pieces of chicken, king prawns and squid garnished with fried cashew nuts served in a hollowed out large pineapple.